Mother's Day Brunch, Made Easy

What better way to celebrate Mother's Day than with a special Sunday brunch? Easy elegance is the order of the day on this menu that features fresh spring flavors and colors. Serve courses individually to give Mom that pampered feeling, or set up a buffet-style spread if you've got family coming over. Dress up the table with flowers and a colorful pitcher of juice-sweetened iced tea so everyone (even kids) can toast to health, happiness, and family.

There was a time when I could never decide on what to buy my mom and grandmother for Mother’s Day. They seem to have everything. Thankfully there is one thing that is always exciting: edible gifts. An edible Mother’s Day gifts show that you took the time to plan and prepare a delicious treat. Mom can share with friends, and brag about how talented her child is in the kitchen, or keep it all to herself, thinking about you every time she indulges.

While many vegetarians have to eschew family food traditions in pursuit of a plant-based diet, there is an ever-growing number of us lucky enough to be raised in a vegetarian household and to learn, from childhood, how to cook and eat healthfully in a vegetarian kitchen. So it was for Mary McCartney—daughter of Paul McCartney of the Beatles and the late Linda McCartney, a rock photographer, musician, and animal rights activist who penned several vegetarian cookbooks and created the vegetarian product line Linda McCartney Foods.

Come the middle of April?no matter how cold the weather or how hard the rainfall, regardless of whether the Lenten rose is blooming, or a single song bird has appeared, shivering, from the south?I can always depend on one harbinger of spring: the opening of our local farmers? market.

Valentine’s Day’s origins are a bit blurry, but some historians trace the holiday back to Roman times. Culinarily speaking, there’s little information on what fertility-enhancing foods the Romans indulged in, though odds are good it wasn’t chocolate packaged in heart-shaped boxes.

Say thank-you to Mom for all those home-cooked meals with a scrumptious brunch she doesn’t have to lift a finger for. There’s enough here to feed the whole family, and everyone can pitch in to help with the preparation.